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BORN
Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. -
STUDIES
He attended Princeton University but he dropped out. -
ARMY
He joined the United States Army during World War I. -
LOVE STORY
. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. He declared his feelings to her but he got rejected by Zelda. -
FIRST NOVEL
He published his commercially successful novel "This Side of Paradise" which became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.. -
MARRIAGE
After publishing his first novel Zelda agreed to marry him and they got married. -
SECOND NOVEL
"The Beautiful and Damned ",his second novel,propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. -
Period: to
TRAVELLING PERIOD
During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. -
THIRD NOVEL
The Great Gatsby,his third novel received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia. -
HIS FINAL NOVEL
Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night. -
THE LAST PART OF HIS LIFE
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works amid the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack . -
AFTER HIS DEATH
His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.